Holes
by alicedrowned
Summary: Locke stumbles upon a terrible development. Can Sawyer save them?


Holes:

Locke wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He'd been searching for boar for the past hour and a half now, and he instinctively knew he was close to cornering one dangerously large specimen. His safety was not his concern, it was the hunt that took his entire focus, the real sensation being one of courage and not fear. He wiped his brow a second time, and pushed forward, digging his long walking stick into the spongy earth as he made his way deeper into the jungle.

But was it courage, he wondered, that kept him moving forward, persuing this beast that was both dangerous and a provider of sustenance. Or was it merely a confused sense of fear that masked itself as courage, a kind of giving up inherent in his soul that said, more emphatically than any other voice inside of himself: "John, you're just not worth it. You're used up. You are nothing."

You are nothing worth losing, therefore the danger to you is moot.

Uncomfortable thoughts. He pushed ahead through the bush, his perseverence rewarded by the familiar grunt of a hideous boar. This would be a good chunk of bacon for the group, even if they were tiring of the meat. Maybe he should let them feast on mangos for the rest of the week and remember why boar meat is precious and not a thing to take for granted.

He took a step forward into deep underbrush, and was startled when his foot nearly gave way.

Locke bent down, puzzled by the darkness peering back at him through the foliage. He cleared it away with his hands, a sense of creeping horror ferreting its way through his soul.

This was worse than any monster.

The word that escaped his lips came out a tortured whisper.

"No."

Jack's reaction to Locke's shifty eyed approach was to stand with his hands on his hips and make believe that nothing the man gave him would be able to knock him off kilter. Try as he might, Locke wasn't the guru he appointed himself, he needed someone to lean on just as much as anyone, and right now it was Jack's strength he was trying to siphon.

"Jack, can I talk to you for a moment? Alone?"

Inwardly, it was all Jack could do not to let out a grin of self satisfaction. Locke might have fooled the rest of the camp, but he knew better.

Locke grabbed Jack by the right shoulder. "We have a serious problem," he said.

Jack frowned. Locke had the demeanor of a panicked man, his upper lip dripped slightly with sweat, his eyes darting back and forth like he was watching a tennis match. He had a secret all right, and had to unburden himself, and of course it was all over miracle worker Jack to sort it out. Jack sighed, and crossed his arms. "What kind of problem?" he asked.

Locke shot a quick look over his shoulder, long enough to bypass the rest of the beach but not quick enough to shake off the interest of Sawyer, nor the inquisitive stare of Kate, who was anxious about all this private Jack time Locke seemed to be sharing.

"Follow me," Locke said.

Jack shrugged over the revelation.

"It's a hole," he said.

"It's not just any hole," Locke said, as he stomped around the circumfurence of the cleared abyss with heavy steps. "Jack, what you are looking at is what's known as a Plot Hole."

"A what?"

"A Plot Hole, Jack," Locke said, his voice tense, his eyes squinting into the morning light (despite it being evening). "It's the kind of thing every story fears. It starts off small enough, sure, but even from this morning...Jack this hole was only the width of my boot about two hours ago. It's already grown four feet in diameter."

Jack put his hands on his hips, his expression taut. "What do we do?"

"Oh my God," a gasped whisper uttered in his ear. He turned to see Kate, who in turn had been followed by Sawyer, Charlie, Sayid, Claire...well, every main character involved in Lost, save for the mysterious 'other forty-eight' who were far more invisible and unknown than The Others.

Sawyer squinted into the hole, his bangs hanging in front of his eyes despite having had a haircut from Kate not two episodes ago. "Just what the hell is going on here?"

Kate ignored Sawyer's poor listening skills and inched toward the hole, her hand reaching out for Jack's shoulder. When she caught his eye she gave him her most tortured, apologetic stare, the kind that made most people look constipated. "Jack...I'm so sorry...This has to be my fault..."

"Kate.."Jack began.

"No, it is," she insisted. "Dammit, Jack, I'm like a superhero, you know that. I can get out of airplane crashes and car crashes and blow up banks and never muss my hair. I can con people like there's no tomorrow and yet I still manage to have a heart of gold, unlike Sawyer, who despite good character development isn't learning from his mistakes and remains an absolute jackass..."

Sawyer gave her an understanding nod.

"...Jack, don't you get it? I'm a goddamned Mary Sue!"

Jack gave her a tortured grin. "No. No way. If anyone's to blame here, it's me. You said it yourself, Kate. I have these tattoos and I'm a Dr. Kildare and...and it all just doesn't add up." He gave her a tortured expression of his own. "You and I both know the flashbacks haven't been able to explain away that statement, the writers have already forgotten about it. It's like the way I have a five o'clock shadow all the time and yet my buzz cut never grows, or the way Hurley's hair isn't at his ass or in dreadlocks by now. And unless he has a serious thyroid problem, ranch dressing isn't going to explain away his weight. No...Locke's right. It's the little things, Kate." He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. "Like hockey and football. We're just not going to make it past the next season."

The island began to rumble...To Locke's horror the hole began to crumble into itself, leaving a larger, black girth, now easily eight feet in width. Bits of debris fell into it. There was no sound as the little stones fell.

"We can't just stand here and watch it take us over!" Charlie suddenly exclaimed. "We can't let it devour the island!"

"What can we do, Charlie?" Locke said. He sat on a large rock near the hole, and threw bits of paper into it, paper that contained his lines. "Eventually, it will eat up the island, eat up our ratings. People will get bored of the inconsistencies and over convoluted plot lines. We'll be like the time Cancer Man on the X-Files revealed he was Mulder's father. We'll be parodies of what we could have been, the open ended question left after the end of the fourth season. No resolution, and frustrated fans doing online petitions to get the answers to the puzzle. We'll head off onto shelves at Wal-Mart, becoming the last great cult classic, the show that never should have been cancelled, the epic that was way ahead of its time and cut short thanks to executive decisions..." He sighed, deeply. "We'll be nothing but what might have been the point, what could have been the answer..."

"No!" Charlie insisted. "Dammit, my character was just getting interesting! There has to be a way to fight this!"

"Writin's on the wall, little man," Sawyer drawled. "It's always when the secondary character gets interesting that they high tail it and dump the show. It's too bad, if you had the time you could have managed your own spin-off--Charlie's Lost With Angels or something..."

"Dude, that isn't funny," Hurley said.

"Didn't say I was a comedian," Sawyer said.

"No, Dude," Hurley said, "That's the problem. You aren't funny. And you squished that cute little frog and put his poor little guts in my palm. Dude, PETA folks are totally pissed at that, and who the hell doesn't love a cute little tree frog? Man, you poured on too much of the hate, now people think of Lost and think of you killing the little happy froggy and making fun of my weight, and well...Dude, they think Lost sucks because of you."

Sawyer frowned. "Hey, wait a minute," he said, angry. "You can't blame all of this mess on me!"

"Of course we can," Sayid said.

"It's time Karma became your bitch," Ana Lucia said.

"Whoa, wait a minute!" Sawyer shouted. "You killed off a main character!"

"And I've also been the one who recognized an Other when she saw one, and also the one who recognizes the need to protect this camp. I've got a tortured past and I'm mean as hell for all the right reasons, even if my delivery is royally flawed..." She poked and pushed at Sawyer's chest with her fingertip. "You're just the asshole most women call their ex-husband."

"Wait," Sawyer said, holding up his hands and backing up from the encroaching crowd. "I'm too pretty to kill off, and people like the guy you just have to hate..."

"Not happy little tree frog killing guys," Hurley reminded him.

The crowd pressed against him, pushing him ever further to the edge of the Hole. Sawyer held his hands in front of him, as though he had some subconscious hope he could push them back. "Look, you don't want to do this...The fans are going to miss me...I'm a major component of this show..."

"Ever heard of six degrees of seperation?" Locke said, smiling with guru self-satisfaction. "You'll be back in the show all right, but as a guest star in a flashback." He narrowed his already beady eyes at Sawyer. "It's amazing how many lives you've touched..."

Sawyer tried to keep his footing, but the ground was soft. He glanced back once, which was his biggest mistake. He took a misstep, and the ground beneath him gave way, his arms helplessly circling, as though he hoped he could fly.

There was a gust of wind over the crowd, a large heavy object slicing its way through them.

A ladder.

Sawyer's arm caught a rung, and it pulled him further into the air, out of the reach of his fellow castaways.

He looked up to see what angel had rescued him, only to see helicopter blades and a familiar face beaming down on him.

"Hang on!" Jeff Probst shouted down to him. "We've another island all set up for you! It's 'Surviving Characters' a reality LOST spin-off!"

Sawyer had only one thing on his mind.

"What's the salary?"

"One million dollars and a raging case of lassa fever."

Sawyer hovered over the hole, contemplating this next career move. "Forget it," he said. "I might squish a frog, but I ain't eatin' no bug."

He let go of the rope ladder, and tumbled into the center of the Hole.

Kate stood at the rim of the abyss, shaking her head.

"Jackass," she said.

END


End file.
